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Revision with GoogleDocs – Google For Educators “Revision is a critical piece of the writing process—and of your classroom curriculum. Now, Google Docs has partnered with Weekly Reader’s Writing for Teens magazine to help you teach it in a meaningful and practical way. On this page, you will find several reproducible PDF articles from Writing magazine filled with student-friendly tips and techniques for revision. You’ll also find a teacher’s guide that provides you with ideas for how to use these materials with Google Docs to create innovative lesson plans about revision for your classroom.”

SortFix Powered Search Blog Sort Fix graphically facilitates search and demonstrates thinking about search refinement. A behind-the- scenes algorithm scans results to identify and present significant keywords. Searchers can grab (or remove) these words from their search baskets to refine their searches and create better queries. A dictionary basket is available to compensate for new vocabulary.

Chatzy – Free Private Chat Rooms A chat tool that is simple, clear, and doesn’t require any Java. It works across browsers and allows a reasonable amount of admin control and management.

F for fail: ‘overcrowded, incoherent’ national curriculum panned SMH article: The NSW Board of Studies and teaching associations for science, maths, English and history have all raised serious concerns about the draft curriculum, saying it is inferior to existing NSW standards and should not go ahead in its present form.

End of the Nook? Amazon announces 14-day Kindle ebook lending | VentureBeat Amazon.com Inc. is going to allow the lending of e-books purchased from its Kindle Store. The online retailer announced the upcoming feature in a discussion forum for the Kindle on its website, saying that later in the year it will start letting Kindle users and people who use its free Kindle apps loan books to others for a two-week period. During the loan, the book’s owner will not be able to read the book, Amazon said. Only some Kindle books will be available for lending; Amazon said that the decision is up to the book’s publisher or rights holder. Barnes and Noble are planning similar provisions with the Nook.

Printz Previews The students at the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Women’s University have created for many trailers for the Printz Award winners and Honor Books dating back to 2000.

DownloadTube Is a One-Click YouTube Conversion and Download Site Thanks to @Lifehacker “If you’re looking for a simple, one-click, solution for converting and downloading YouTube videos sans software, DownloadTube is a free tool for web-based YouTube file conversion. Copy the URL of the video you want to convert, visit DownloadTube and paste it in, then select which format you want. DownloadTube can convert YouTube videos into MPG, MOV, 3GP, MP4, convert it to an audio-only MP3 file, or grab the native FLV flash file for you. Click “Convert and Download” and the file is converted and saved to your computer.”

The new era of workplace learning – Jane Hart This is the second of a two-part article that looks at the emerging trends in learning tools and workplace learning. In this part, Jane Hart, a Consultant from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies – www.C4LPT, looks at the future of workplace learning and the implications for Learning & Development.

In a world where many applications aim to everything for us I have found one today that does not. Min.us does just one thing, and it does it quite well, it shares images. As long as you’re using Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer 9 you can simply drag and drop images into Min.us.

This tool is useful for anyone looking for a way to share pictures online without the hassle of logging in. You do not need to have an account to create an album and you have anonymous uploading as your IP is not logged. This allows you to create galleries without anyone knowing who created them.

You are given a set of special links:

An editor’s link that allows you to

Name a gallery by clicking on top right “Untitled” button.

Add more photographs into gallery by dragging them onto gallery page. However it seems that you cannot rename the images once on the page so think about the names and rename the files on your hard disk first

Delete photos from gallery by clicking X icons.

Delete entire gallery by clicking Trash icon.

A viewer link: to share the whole album/gallery to your friends,

A direct link for each image that allows you to share a single image. However when trying to share a link to a specific image in a large gallery it took a long time because Min.us loads every image sequentially so it took quite some time to get to the required image.

The tool might be useful for class or group sharing of photos. As you don’t need an account to log in, students don’t have to give any details and so can safely remain anonymous.

The developers have stated they want Min.us to be a sharing platform for all media types (photo, video, audio, and documents) but it is still very early days.

At the moment it is completely free but when dealing with such large quantities of data this may change.

Thanks to a post on the Fiction Focus (CMIS) site, I found out about a collection of book trailers. These have been created for many of the Printz Award winners and Honor Books and go back as far as 2000. They were created by students at the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Women’s University.

The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association. The award is sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association.

Speaking of using the film media to promote books – here is another interesting item.

Since the movie came out we have had a great rush on John Marsden’s books. There has always been a steady readership but, invariably, after a movie adaptation there is a rush back to the book. We are fortunate that we have mini class sets of the Tomorrow series books and we have been able to accommodate all those who have come to the library keen to read the books

The first book in the Tomorrow series was published in 1993 but there is a renewed surge of interest in the novel because it is now ‘a major motion picture’. The film version of Tomorrow When the War Began was released in cinemas during the September school holidays in Australia, and as a tie-in Pan MacMillan have re-published the novel, and its numerous sequels, with new cover designs made up of stills from the film.

Any author would be happy to have their novel back at the front of the book store but the translation from page to screen inevitably involves compromise and that can sometimes be less comfortable.

John Marsden was as articulate as ever and he gave thoughtful answers. He discusses the changes/differences between his story (the characterisations, the portrayal of violence, the way the enemies are less faceless to name three) and the new medium of film. The podcast is 17 minutes long but very easy to listen to and many of our boys would have opinions on the issues discussed.

DownloadTube Is a One-Click YouTube Conversion and Download Site Thanks to @Lifehacker “If you’re looking for a simple, one-click, solution for converting and downloading YouTube videos sans software, DownloadTube is a free tool for web-based YouTube file conversion. Copy the URL of the video you want to convert, visit DownloadTube and paste it in, then select which format you want. DownloadTube can convert YouTube videos into MPG, MOV, 3GP, MP4, convert it to an audio-only MP3 file, or grab the native FLV flash file for you. Click “Convert and Download” and the file is converted and saved to your computer.”

SCIS | Thinking about ebooks An article that describes and discusses the ebook, looking at what it is, and what it is not. He discusses fiction versus non-fiction, reference material and textbooks, and how the ebook can enhance usability.

ISU – I Show You ISU enable people to easily Record a sequence of operations in applications. Edit the recorded presentation, draw on it and add nice notes and stylish HTML pages.Send it to friends via Email, Messenger or any other application or Browser Email. Or even create FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) in a Center-Folder.

FreeScreencast.com – Features Free software that lets you record your screen, capture audio, control the cursor, and export to FLV format. You can then upload to FreeScreencast.com for free hosting (no file size or resolution limits) and sharing.

Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project attractively displays the text of Shakespearean plays, enhanced with definitions, images, audio and video to support and enhance reading of the play. The Canadian site has many extraordinary curricular features (and a couple of cool games!) including The Learning Commons offers a bounty of guides and courses.

Lori Gracey’s 60 Websites: Information Lori Gracey from TCEA kick it through the goal post on Thursday Oct 7th 2010 with her 60 sites in 60 minutes presentation. Despite the lack of a decent internet connection,she lept everyone entertained during her presentation which was focused on internet connections

Download free textbooks online Bookboon provides free online textbooks for students in PDF format. A range of subjects are available, and content is presented at a university level.

Welcome | Flat World Knowledge Flat World Knowledge has free online textbooks in business, the humanities and the sciences that are available to both teachers and students.

DoppelMe – Free Dynamic Avatars DoppelMe is a dynamic avatar maker that lets you create a cool graphical likeness of yourself, your friends, family or any group of people for use as an avatar in forums, instant messenger, blogs and almost anywhere else on the web.

WatchKnow – Free Educational Videos for K-12 Students WatchKnow has indexed over 15,000 online educational videos for children. Select from over 3,000 categories or search by subject and age level. Titles, descriptions, age level, and ratings are all added for usefulness. The site invites broad participation in a new kind of wiki system, guided by teachers.

The Enchanted Inkpot. “The Enchanted Inkpot is a community for writers and readers of high, historical, traditional and cross-genre fantasy intended for middle-grade and young adult readers”

The trailers for the next Ranger’s Apprentice book certainly whet the appetite for the next installment. Msny of our boys really like this series. The books are great adventures with a hint of fantasy (but not). The book is due out on the 1st of November – in time for Christmas

The trailers are short and are good examples for students who may want to create trailers as a response to a book rather than the traditional “write a review”. I think that the students have a good chance of creating an even better trailer than these so that will be my challenge to them.

Jane Hart has, since 2007, been building an annual Top 100 Tools for Learning list based on the contributions of learning professionals worldwide. She has asked learning professionals worldwide (e.g. teacher, academic, trainer, consultant, developer, practitioner, analyst, etc) and active in the field of e-learning, to put down their choices.

She has now compiled her annual list Top Tools for Learning and you can review it. I always find the results interesting, especially seeing the changes, what is up and what has gone down. She has again created a Winners & Losers 2010 page showing the tools that have gone up and down the list or fallen off it completely or are new entrants this year.

I put in my choices and it forced me to create a top 10. I found this very difficult to do. Although a few tools stood out and were constantly in use by me on a daily basis, the next level down is probably broader/more extensive. I also forgot to put in Corel photo-paint, probably because I use it so constantly to resize images for web use that I don’t even think about it. Also forgot YouTube and I probably should have put that one in too.

The above quote is an interesting one as the debate about being open and free vs closed, freely sharing vs private (and/or pay for). Many cases are not 100% in either camp. Many services offer free versions for the basic (and tempting) formats but you pay for more advanced options. What will finally win – free or pay, open or private? Schools are very reluctant to be open for a variety of reasons, some more valid than others. It is an interesting time as the degrees of openness and “closedness” change daily whilst the old comes to terms with the new.

PHYLO: THE TRADING CARD GAME “an online initiative aimed at creating a Pokemon card type resource but with real creatures on display in full “artistic” wonder. Not only that – but we plan to have the scientific community weigh in to determine the content on such cards, as well as folks who love gaming to try to design interesting ways to use the cards. Then to top it all off, members of the teacher community will participate to see whether these cards have educational merit. Best of all, the hope is that this will all occur in a non-commercial open access open source because basically this is good for you your children and your planet sort of way.”

Mozilla Labs » Gaming Mozilla Labs Gaming is the latest project launched by Mozilla Labs, committed to providing the game developer community with the platform and tools they need to make innovative games on the Open Web.

LitWorld – The Nonprofit Cultivating Literacy Leaders Worldwide Aiming to help 1 million children learn to read by 2014, LitWorld supports literacy and educational programs in communities from Harlem to Baghdad. “LitWorld’s mission is to cultivate literacy leaders worldwide through transformational literacy experiences that build connection, understanding, resilience and strength. We work with teachers, parents, community members, and children to support the development of literacy and the redemptive power of story in the world’s most vulnerable communities.”

NASA – Classroom Some great free resources at the NASA site and offers student interactivity using real life NASA datafor classroom projects. Students have free access to the NASA Virtual Lab for example to use a scanning electron microscope. Users can zoom and focus into a variety of built-in microscopic samples. You can explore Earth’s geography, geology and more with global 3D viewer, View 2D graphs, Map hurricanes and much more

The First Amendment First Aid Kit As a conclusion to Banned Books Week 2010, Random House USA has been posting author’s thoughts on censorship, along with much other useful material on their First Amendment First Aid Kit pages. ‘In their own words’ features Judy Blume, the late Robert Cormier, Zilpha Keatley Snyder and Lois Lowry commenting on censorship and their novels: